Michael Oster is an artist of extremes. From beautiful and detailed nature recordings to experimental sonic butchery and audio destruction, his releases cover a lot of ground. He has an extensive background in audio engineering and sound design with a career that spans over 20 years.

Currently, his experimental releases involve the use of his custom designed synthesizers and audio manipulators which he creates in Native Instruments Reaktor software. His base of operations is his laptop studio called F7 Sound and Vision. He also is the force behind the "Difficult Listening Channel" podcast which features an ever-evolving mashup of original sonic material.

It's intense noise. The kind you were warned about. But it's deeper than that. Complex and always moving, Oster keeps it going on "Breakfast at Lobotomy's" with thick, heavy walls of electronic destruction!

Left: Laptop computer as a musical noise instrument! Made in Reaktor!

More on Native Instruments Reaktor: This is the program that I use to make my own synths. Yes there are other popular ones out there like MAX/MSP and similar. But for some reason, I just 'clicked' with Reakor. And by 'click' I mean that after almost 9 years of using it, I kind of, sort of have a feel for how things work. It's very deep! It's limited only by processor power, imagination, programming skills and time.

Modular synthesis at its best! What I like about it is that if I need an effect, I just 'make' it. Need a different signal path, no big deal. Want to adjust parameters? Cool, add an LFO. Need 100 independent LFO's modulating different sound parameters? Done! Want to control it from your iPad? Yes, please. OK, try Touch OSC. It works! Want it to 'live and breathe on its own? It can pretty much do that too. Like I said Reaktor is a really deep program and after almost 9 years of using it, I know just a little - enough to put my eye out basically.